Scientific method

The scientific method is a methodology to obtain new knowledge, which has historically characterized science, and which consists of systematic observation, measurement, experimentation and the formulation, analysis and modification of hypotheses. The main characteristics of a valid scientific method are falsifiability and reproducibility and repeatability of results, corroborated by peer review. Some types of techniques or methodologies used are deduction, induction, abduction, and prediction, among others.

The scientific method encompasses the practices accepted by the scientific community as valid when exposing and confirming their theories. The rules and principles of the scientific method seek to minimize the influence of the scientist's subjectivity in his work, thus reinforcing the validity of the results, and therefore, of the knowledge obtained.

Not all sciences have the same requirements. Experimentation, for example, is not possible in sciences like theoretical physics. The requirement of reproducibility and repeatability, fundamental in many sciences, does not apply to others, such as the human and social sciences, where phenomena not only cannot be repeated in a controlled and artificial way (which is what an experiment consists of), but also they are, by their essence, unrepeatable, for example, history.

Likewise, there is no single model of scientific method. The scientist can use defining, classificatory, statistical, empirical-analytical, hypothetical-deductive methods, measurement procedures, among others. For this reason, referring to the scientific method is referring to a set of tactics used to construct knowledge in a valid way. These tactics may be improved upon, or replaced by others, in the future. Each science, and even each specific investigation, may require its own model of scientific method.

In the empirical sciences verification is not possible; that is, there is no such thing as "perfect" or "proven" knowledge. Every scientific theory remains always open to be refuted. In the formal sciences, mathematical deductions or proofs generate proofs only within the framework of the system defined by certain axioms and certain rules of inference.

Steps of the scientific method

Observation

Observation is the active acquisition of information about a phenomenon or primary source. Living beings detect and assimilate the features of an element using their senses as main instruments. In humans, this not only includes sight and all other senses, but also the use of tools, techniques, and measuring instruments. The term can also refer to any data collected during this activity.

Acquiring information about the phenomena that surround the observer, be it with laboratory work or with field work, is usually the first step of the empirical method in scientific research. These observations lead to curiosity and the raising of questions about why a phenomenon occurs, or its relationship to other phenomena.Observations can be classified in terms of their occurrence, frequency, duration, time, qualitative dimensions, among others.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis (from the Greek hypo, 'subordination' or 'below' and thesis, 'conclusion that is supported by reasoning') is an unverified statement, which one attempts to confirm or refute. If confirmed, the hypothesis is called a verified statement. The hypothesis is a conjecture that requires a contrast with experience. For it, persuasive arguments are not enough, however elaborate they may be. Note that from certain hypotheses others can be deduced and, successively, it is possible to arrive at certain basic statements, of direct observation.

A scientific hypothesis is an acceptable proposition that has been formulated through the collection of information and data, even if it is not confirmed, it serves to respond in an alternative and scientifically based way to a problem.A hypothesis can be used as a tentative proposition that is not intended to be strictly proven, or it can be a prediction that must be verified by the scientific method. In the first case, the level of truth given to a hypothesis will depend on the extent to which the empirical data support what is stated in the hypothesis. This is what is known as empirical testing of the hypothesis or hypothesis validation process. This process can be done by confirmation (for universal hypotheses) and/or by verification (for existential hypotheses).

Theory

After observations, scientifics releases scientific statements known as theories that define a hypothesis or group of hypothesis that can be accepted as true based on repeated experimentation with similar results over the time, and they can be rejected with new experiments as results or validated as universal scientific laws. Been theories continuous and persistent hypothesis about reality.

Experimentation

Experimentation, a common method of experimental sciences and technologies, consists of the study of a phenomenon, reproduced in the particular conditions of study of interest, generally in a laboratory, eliminating or introducing those variables that may influence it. Usually, the goal of experimentation is to prove or disprove hypotheses.

Measurement

Measurement is a basic process of science that is based on comparing a selected unit of measure with the object or phenomenon whose physical magnitude is to be measured, to find out how many times the unit is contained in that magnitude.

Measurement is also defined as the quantification of the attributes of an object or event, which can be used to compare with other objects or events. The scope and application of measurement depend on the context and discipline. In the natural sciences and engineering, measurements do not apply to the nominal properties of objects or events, which is consistent with the guidelines in the International Vocabulary of Metrology published by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. However, in In other fields such as statistics, as well as in the social sciences and behavioral sciences, measurements can have multiple levels, which would include nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio scales.Measurement is a cornerstone of business, science, technology, and quantitative research in many disciplines. Historically, many measurement systems existed for the various fields of human existence in order to facilitate comparisons in these fields. They were often achieved through local agreements between business partners or collaborators. Beginning in the 18th century, developments progressed toward unified and widely accepted standards that gave rise to the modern International System of Units (SI). This system reduces all physical measurements to a mathematical combination of seven basic units. The science of measurement is developed in the field of metrology.

Falsifiability

In philosophy of science, falsifiability or falsifiability is the ability of a theory or hypothesis to be subjected to potential evidence that contradicts it. It is one of the two pillars of the scientific method, reproducibility being the other.

According to falsificationism, every valid scientific proposition must be capable of being falsified or refuted. One of its main implications is that the experimental corroboration of a scientifically "proven" theory—even the most fundamental of them—is always open to scrutiny.Falsifiability, in each and every one of its many forms, is an interesting idea, but insufficient to characterize what science is or to solve the problem of demarcation. It suffers from a series of logical and epistemological difficulties that should give us pause if we are seeking an answer as to what is good science and what is not.

Reproducibility and repeatability

Reproducibility is the ability of a test or experiment to be reproduced or replicated by others, in particular, by the scientific community. Reproducibility is one of the pillars of the scientific method, falsifiability being the other.

Although there are conceptual differences according to the scientific discipline, in many disciplines, especially those that involve the use of statistics and computational processes, it is understood that a study is reproducible if it is possible to exactly recreate all the results from the original data. and the computer code used for the analyses. In contrast, in this context, repeatability refers to the possibility of obtaining consistent results when replicating a study with a different set of data, but obtained following the same experimental design. Likewise, the term is closely related to the concept of testability.In recent years, repeated failures to replicate experiments have led to a replication crisis in various sciences.

Peer Review

Peer review or arbitration is an evaluation used to assess written works carried out by one or more people with similar skills to the producers of the work (experts) but who are not part of the editorial staff of the work to be evaluated, in order to ensure the quality, feasibility and scientific rigor of the work. It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are used to maintain quality standards, provide credibility, and correct original articles written by researchers.In academia, historians of science often regard the peer-review publishing system as an important part of the progress that science has experienced since at least the 19th century. Many scientists, especially in the area of ​​experimental sciences, consider it an essential component of scientific activity. In other words, without this system, many scientists consider that the advancement of science would be in danger because it would not be easy to distinguish quality articles from those that are mere repetitions of things already discovered, or even to differentiate between the best works and the best. those that contained serious errors or bad practices. However, peer review is not without its flaws and problems. For example, that sometimes the editorial decisions of rejection (or acceptance) are wrong. The evaluation process is not infallible either and almost every year there is a scandal in the form of already published articles that must be withdrawn because bad practices have been discovered subsequently, from falsified data to plagiarism or conflicts of interest.Peer review can be classified by the type of activity and by the field or profession in which the activity is performed, for example medical peer review.

Publication

A scientific text, that is, a scientific publication or scientific communication, is one of the last steps of any scientific research, prior to external debate.

They began with personal letters between scientists, books, and periodicals (such as yearbooks or scientific journals). Currently the most advanced tool is the Internet (one of the objectives, at its birth, and which is revealed to be very useful, is its use as a mechanism to communicate the different phases of scientific research between scientists and soldiers located in different parts of the world). If the scientific finding is of great importance or topicality, the mass media and press conferences are also used, although it is considered disrespectful to do so before having communicated it to the scientific community.In addition to its generic use, a type of scientific text, more or less brief, originally conceived for oral transmission, is usually specifically called

communication; especially the one sent to a congress or symposium so that it is available to the attendees, whether or not it gives rise to a conference actually read at that meeting. Very often they are published together.

History

The history of the scientific method reveals that the scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science. Many eminent philosophers and scientists have argued for the primacy of one or the other approach to attaining and establishing scientific knowledge. Despite many disagreements about the primacy of one approach over another, there have also been many identifiable trends and historical milestones over the several millennia of development of the scientific method to the current forms from which they emerged. which have been important

Some of the most important debates in the history of the scientific method were between rationalism, empiricism, inductivism, which began to be taken into account from Isaac Newton and his followers, and the hypothetical-deductive method that emerged at the beginning of the 19th century. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the debate centered between realism and anti-realism in discussions of scientific method as scientific theories spread and prominent philosophers argued for the existence of universal rules of science.Philosophy recognizes numerous methods, among which are the method by definition, demonstration, dialectical, transcendental, intuitive, phenomenological, semiotic, axiomatic, inductive. The philosophy of science is the one that, as a whole, best establishes the ontological assumptions and methods of science, pointing out its evolution in the history of science and the different paradigms within which it develops.

Hume and the observation of the facts

If, persuaded of these principles, we make a review of the libraries, what havoc we will not do! If we take in our hands a volume of theology, for example, or of scholastic metaphysics, let us ask: does it contain any abstract reasoning about quantity or numbers? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning on questions of fact or existence? No. Throw it into the fire; for it contains nothing but sophistry and lies.David Hume

Hume's quote illustrates early modern thinking and was important in the constitution of modern science: that it was based on the measurement and quantification of empirically observable "facts".

However, the limitations of this thinking soon became apparent. Newton claimed " I make no assumptions " and was convinced that his theory was supported by the facts. He intended to deduce his laws from phenomena observed by Kepler. Most scientists, before Einstein, thought that Newton's physics was grounded in the reality of observed facts.

However, even Newton had to introduce his theory of perturbations in order to hold that planets had elliptical motions, and he really couldn't account for gravity. That is, some empirical observations contradicted the theories that Newton himself supported with a finite number of observations of the "facts"; since it is impossible to observe all the facts or phenomena. This is a fundamental problem of the status of science: what is an experimental reasoning about facts or existence, given a finite number of observations?

Popper and falsifiability

It is now freely admitted that no law of nature can be validly derived from a finite number of facts.

Karl Popper proposed the falsifiability criterion to replace the verification criterion. With the falsifiability criterion, the observation of the facts is turned on its head: a scientific theory is valid unless an obtained, or at least conceivable, result contradicts the results predicted by the theory. Falsifiability advanced the understanding of the scientific method, and gave it a simultaneously stricter and more realistic character: it is not necessary to corroborate all the possible facts that corroborate a theory, something impossible, but to look for an exception that contradicts it. Every falsifiable scientific theory is thus always open to refutation.

However, Popper himself was aware of the limitations of strict falsifiability in contrast to falsifiability in practice: the strict form of falsifiability contradicts the reality of science construction, since theories do not usually collapse for a single reason. crucial observation or experiment that contradicts them. Normally, accepting anomalies is resorted to, or ad hoc hypotheses are generated, as new knowledge is constructed.

Lakatos, a student of Popper, pointed out that the history of science is replete with accounts of how crucial experiments supposedly destroy theories. But such expositions are often made long after the theory has been abandoned. If Popper had asked a Newtonian scientist, prior to the Theory of Relativity, under what experimental conditions he would abandon Newton's theory, some Newtonian scientists would have received the same disqualification that he himself gave to some Marxists and psychoanalysts.

Kuhn and scientific revolutions

According to Kuhn, science advances through revolutions when a paradigm shift occurs, which does not depend on the observation of the facts but constitutes a change of reference from a specific field or area of ​​scientific research to a more general theory that encompasses a much wider area.

Thus, a field or area of ​​research always has its reference in a general theory, endowed with a characteristic fundamental nucleus firmly established and defended in a stable scientific tradition, even when it presents irregularities and unresolved problems. In this sense, taking Popper's strict definition of falsification is equivalent to taking for sure that all theories are born already refuted, which would break the possibility of progress and unity of science.

What constitutes theories as "scientific" is not their "demonstrated truth", which is not, but their ability to show new truths that arise by continuing to offer new avenues of investigation, raising new hypotheses and opening new avenues of vision. general of the field in question. Only at the end of a broad process of construction and reconstruction of a theory can a new theory or paradigm or more general research program emerge that explains with a new optics the same facts explained by the first previous theory, but considering them with a vision of the world. more espacious.

When a new theory emerges, the old theory will then cease to be recognized as current science; because it has ceased to be a reference as a means of expanding knowledge. What makes us lose the scientific value that they have shown for quite some time and the historical nature of their contribution to the construction of science.

Examples of the evolution of science

The observed facts and the laws that founded Newton's Theory will continue to be the same terrestrial phenomena in the same way that they did in the 18th century; and in that sense they will remain true. But their interpretation has another meaning when they are considered in the broader framework of the "theory of relativity" in which they are included as a specific case.

The experimental truth of observation of factsof seeing the sun rise in the east and set in the west every day remains the same. As are the annotations of the movement of the planets made by Ptolemy, as by Copernicus or Tycho Brahe. But in the same way that the interpretations of such observations reflected within the framework of the geocentric theory of Aristotle or Ptolemy explained better and offered different visions with respect to the "astrologies" that existed in their historical and cultural moment, in turn the interpretation heliocentric of Copernicus or Tycho Brahe greatly enriched the vision of the heavens with respect to the previous ones and made possible the vision of Kepler and Newton's Theory. Interpretation of the same observational data offer, however,new observations and new hypotheses.

The latter theory is continually expanding and transforming as a scientific paradigm; the previous or practically no longer have anything to say except as an object of historical study and reference in the evolution and construction of scientific knowledge insofar as they were paradigms in their time or make sense in a specific application in a specifically delimited field such as specific case of the fundamental theory. Such is the case of the "utility" of Newton's theory when it comes to movements and spaces and times of certain dimensions. In the same way that architects consider the earth "as if it were flat" in their projects. Well, in the dimensions that his projects encompass, the influence of the roundness of the earth is negligible.

Communication and community

Often, the scientific method is used not only by one person, but by several individuals who cooperate with each other directly or indirectly. Such cooperation can be seen as one of the defining elements of a scientific community. Various techniques have been developed to ensure the integrity of scientific methodology within these environments.

Typical tour

Fundamentally, the construction of current scientific knowledge is characterized by the following features:

• Investigation of a change in problems, theoretical or practical, in a specific area or scientific field with a consolidated
• From a team generally financed by a public institution, private foundation or private
• Directed by someone of recognized prestige as an expert in the field of research, be it an individual or a research team
• Following a carefully established research method
• Published in specialized magazines
• Incorporated and assumed the conclusions in the work of the scientific community of the field in question as dynamic elements of new research that expand the initial problem generating new expectations, predictions, etc. or, put in proper terms, the result is a theoretically progressive
• The recognition is usually converted into a patent right for 20 years when it has a practical or technical application.

Practice dimensions

The main restrictions to contemporary science are:

• Publication, for example peer review
• Resources, mainly economic

Despite this, the conditions have not always been the same: in the old days of the "gentleman scientist", who subsidized and published the works, the restrictions were much less severe.

Both of these limitations indirectly require the scientific method, since work that violates these restrictions will be difficult to publish and difficult to finance. The journals require that the papers presented have followed good scientific practice, and this is mainly verified by peer review. Originally, importance and interest were more important, like the example of the Nature journal author guidelines.

The scientific method as a method for the elimination of fallacies and prejudices

The scientific method involves the observation of natural phenomena and then the postulation of hypotheses and their verification through experimentation. Well, cognitive prejudices are nothing more than hypotheses, inductions or mental constructions that have been biased positively or negatively by the brain. Likewise, when affirmations are made or arguments are made and these cognitive prejudices come to light, they become fallacies. Cognitive prejudice or mental process with which beliefs are skewed cannot be eliminated as it is a physiological aspect intrinsic to the psyche of the human being and which also seems to be extended evolutionarily since it fulfills its function in the association and recognition of everyday objects, see for example pareidolia. What is possible is to compensate for bias or modify one's own beliefs using the scientific method as a mechanism to rule out hypotheses that are false. In this way, the bias would be towards hypotheses that are less false until new reviews in search of unknown factors or new information.

Science does not claim to be absolute, authoritative, or dogmatic. All ideas, hypotheses, theories; all scientific knowledge is subject to revision, study and modification. The knowledge we have represents the scientific hypotheses and theories supported by observations and experiments (empirical method).

In order not to fall into cognitive prejudice, experimentation is therefore necessary; failure to do so would lead to the same negligence, since the truth of an assertion according to the scientific method rests on the strength of its evidence verified by experimentation. After carrying out the experimentation, the results are analyzed and a conclusion is reached. If the results support the hypothesis, it acquires validity; if the results refute it, it is discarded or modified by presenting new ways to refute it.

The scientific method is also naturally affected by cognitive prejudices since the associative effects of our mind are those that allow, at the same time, to launch the largest number of hypotheses. However, the method, if it is well executed in its last and most important steps, allows them to be discarded.

The first step in the empirical scientific method is the careful observation of a phenomenon and the description of the facts, this is where prejudices come into play. Later, the scientist tries to explain it through hypotheses which are already biased by prejudices in the perception of events or in their own beliefs. However, only ideas that can be experimentally verified are within the scope of science, which allows many theories to be discarded. If the stated hypotheses were invalidated, they should predict the consequences in the experiment and it should also be possible to repeat them. In this way, through experimentation, repetition and supervision of the experiment by people who might have other cognitive biases, the errors of the experiment are minimized, errors in the interpretation of the results or errors in statistics that would make the theory a false or imprecise belief. For this reason, peer review is used in science, the greater the number of reviews, the less probability of bias or false interpretation of the experimental data, with which the work is considered more rigorous or stable.

Such a process, although much less rigorous, can be observed in critical thinking when it requires its own active research to clarify arguments and check sources of information. In critical thinking, decisions are made based on the burden of proof that has been made on the sources and the arguments and the information obtained can be indirect (hence the lack of rigor). In the scientific method, not only must the fact be proven by direct experimentation, but it must also be possible to repeat it.

The empirical method is a great advance that allows us to approach the truth. It is a great milestone that has allowed society to advance and should be widely known to extend its use in other disciplines, however, the method remains a method that is restricted to the capacity of the evaluator. This means that not only biases or culture influence the method, but it is also limited by the very capacity of the human species. It is the human being who not only proposes the ideas but also decides how to verify them. What would happen if the human being was not able to see beyond his intelligence to know the truth?The idea that there is a species limitation limits the very application of the method. To avoid this, just as evolution, which in itself is not directly observable or measurable, generated beings as complex as humans from the same non-intelligent chaos, the random combination of experimentation elements together with the parallelization of experimentation and clear energy rules, they should make random discoveries over long periods of time. The combination of these two random-evolutionary methods together with the empirical scientific method could produce more important advances because they are not constrained to the current cultural framework. In fact, much of the scientific advances have occurred by chance, error and luck and not by conscious deduction.

The problem with cognitive biases is that they are usually applied to concepts that change regularly, perhaps at a faster rate than can be measured by testing or experimentation, they are also not uniform and have exceptions, these biases are therefore based on probabilities and not true statements. The scientific method at least allows weighing these probabilities, making statistics and reviewing one's own security in the affirmations. In this way it should eliminate the position of certainty or perfect knowledge of the functioning of the world. The scientific method, therefore, becomes the master method for testing hypotheses and discarding false ones. This is what Einstein meant when he said “There are not enough experiments to show that I am right; but a simple experiment may prove me wrong.' Otherwise, without the scientific method, assumptions or prejudices would be fixed when circumstances change, subject to our own interpretations of reality.

The role of chance in discovery

Somewhere between 33% and 50% of all scientific discoveries is the rate of scientific discoveries that, instead of being found, were found by chance. This may explain why scientists often say they were lucky. Louis Pasteur is credited with the famous phrase, "Luck favors the prepared mind", but some psychologists have begun to study what it means to be "prepared". for luck" in a scientific context. Research is showing that scientists are taught various heuristics that tend to take advantage of opportunity and the unexpected .This is what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls "antifragility"; while some research systems are fragile in the face of human error, human preferences and chance, the scientific method is tougher and more resistant; in such a way it benefits from that randomness in different ways, since it is antifragile. Taleb believes that the more antifragile the system is, the more results it will give in reality.

Psychologist Kevin Dunbar says that the discovery process often begins with a group of researchers finding flaws in their experiments. These unexpected results lead the researchers to try to fix what they think may be the flaw in their methods. At some point, the researcher decides that the error is too persistent and systematic to be a coincidence. The highly controlled, curious and cautious aspects of the scientific method are therefore what make it suitable for identifying such persistent errors. At this point, the researcher will begin to think of various theoretical explanations for the failure, often seeking the help of colleagues from different domains of experience.

Relationship with mathematics

Science is the process of collecting, comparing, and evaluating proposed models with the observable. A model can be a simulation, a mathematical or chemical formula, or a series of predetermined steps. Science is like mathematics in that researchers in both disciplines can clearly distinguish what is known from what is unknown.at each stage of discovery. Models, both scientific and mathematical, need to be internally consistent, just as they need to be falsifiable. In mathematics, a statement must not be proved at the same time; since at that stage a statement would still be called a conjecture. However, when such a statement has acquired a mathematical proof, it gains a kind of immortality that is highly prized by mathematicians, and for which some mathematicians dedicate their lives.

Mathematical and scientific work can inspire each other. For example, the technical concept of time grew out of science, and timelessness was a distinctive theme of mathematics. But to this day, the Poincaré conjecture has been proved using time as a mathematical concept in which objects can flow (see Ricci Flow).

Still, the connection between mathematics and reality (as well as science to the extent that it describes reality) remains obscure. Eugene Wigner's work, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, is a well-known approach to the problem by this Nobel Prize-winning physicist. In fact, some observers, such as Gregory Chaitin and George Lakoff, have suggested that mathematics is the result of human limitations (including cultural ones) with the inclinations of the practitioner, something like a post-modernist vision of science..

George Pólya's work on problem solving, the construction of mathematical proofs, and heuristics demonstrate that the mathematical and scientific methods differ in details, yet make them resemble each other by using iterative and repetitive steps (see How to pose and solve problems by G. Pólya).

mathematical method	Scientific method
Understanding	Characterization by experience and observation
Analysis	Hypothesis development
Synthesis	scientific prediction
Review - Generalization	Experimentation

In Pólya's view, understanding includes reframing unfamiliar definitions in one's own words, resorting to geometric figures, and questioning what we know and don't know yet; analysis, which Pólya borrows from Pappus of Alexandria, includes free and heuristic construction of plausible arguments, working backwards from the target, and devising a plan to construct a proof; synthesis is the strictly Euclidean exposition of the step-by-step details of the proof; Review includes the reconsideration and reexamination of the result and the path that has led to it.

Gauss, when asked how he arrived at his theorems, once replied "durch planmässiges Tattonieren" (through palpable systematic experimentation).

Imre Lakatos discussed that mathematicians make use of contradiction, criticism, and revision as principles to improve their work. Like science, where truth is sought, but certainty is not found, in Proofs and Refutations(1976), in which Lakatos tried to establish that there is no final or perfect theorem of informal mathematics. This means that we should not think that a theorem is definitely true, only that, for now, no counterexample has been found. Once such a counterexample is found, as an entity that is contradicted by the theorem, the theorem is adjusted, possibly extending the domain of its validity. This is a way of accumulating our knowledge, through logic and the process of proofs and refutations. (If axioms are given for only one branch of mathematics, Lakatos claimed that the proofs of such axioms are tautological; logical truth, for example, was rewritten, as Poincaré did [ Proofs and Refutations, 1976].)

Lakatos proposed an account of mathematical knowledge based on Polya's idea of ​​heuristics. In Proofs and Refutations, Lakatos gave several ground rules for finding proofs and counterexamples to conjectures. He thought that thought experiments for mathematics were a valid way to discover mathematical conjectures and proofs.

Logic and mathematics are essential for all sciences due to the ability to safely infer some truths from other established ones; it is what makes them receive the denomination of exact sciences.

The most important function of both is the creation of formal systems of inference and the concretion in the expression of scientific models. The observation and collection of measurements, as well as the creation of hypotheses and prediction, often require logical-mathematical models and the extensive use of calculus; The creation of scientific models through numerical calculation is especially relevant, due to the enormous calculation possibilities offered by computers.

The most commonly used branches of mathematics in science include mathematical analysis, numerical computation, and statistics, although virtually every branch of mathematics has applications in science, even "pure" areas such as number theory and topology.

Logical empiricism came to postulate that science came to be, in its formal unity, a logical-mathematical science capable of adequately interpreting the reality of the world. The usefulness of mathematics to describe the universe is a central theme of the philosophy of mathematics.

Computer science is generating new ways of developing non-numerical models independently of strict mathematical logic. Such is the case with the new developments in artificial intelligence, which, thanks to information technology, make it possible for the so-called "computers", previously limited to the formulas of mere logical-mathematical algorithmic computation, to generate recognition patterns by imitating the neural networks of the brain. brain, from the choice of examples stored in memory. Deep learning algorithms make it possible to build computer equipment, robots, capable of moving and performing self-programmed actions based on external stimuli received and interpreted according to their memory patterns.

Philosophy and sociology of science

Philosophy looks directly at the logical underpinnings of the scientific method, which separates science from non-science and the ethics of research that is supposed to be implicit in science. There are several basic assumptions, derived from philosophy by at least one renowned scientist, that form the basis of the scientific method, such as that reality is objective and consistent, that humans have the ability to perceive reality accurately, and that there are rational explanations for anything in the real world.These assumptions of methodological naturalism form a foundation on which science can be built. Logical positivism, empiricism, falsifiability, and other theories have criticized these assumptions and given alternative views of the logic of science, but all of them have also been criticized on the other hand.

Thomas Kuhn surveyed the history of science in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and found that the method used by scientists differed significantly from the method used previously. His observations of scientific practice were primarily sociological and do not speak to how science may have been practiced in other times or by other cultures.

Norwood Russell Hanson, Imre Lakatos, and Thomas Kuhn have worked extensively on the "theory-laden" characteristic of observation. Hanson coined the idea that all observation is dependent on the conceptual framework of the observer, using the concept of Gestalt psychology to show how preconceptions can affect both observation and description. He begins his first chapter with a discussion of the Golgi apparatus and its initial rejection as a dye artifact, and a discussion between Brahe and Kepler observing the sunrise, who see the sun rise differently despite being the same physiological phenomenon. Kuhn and Feyerabend acknowledge being the pioneers in finding the importance of this work.

Kuhn said in 1961 that the scientist has a theory in his mind before designing and carrying out the experiments that will lead to empirical observations, and that the path from theory to measurement can almost never be reversed. This implies that the way in which the theory is tested is dictated by the nature of the theory itself, which led the author to argue that "once it has been adopted by a profession, no theory is recognized as being testable through no quantitative exam that I haven't already passed.

Paul Feyerabend similarly examined the history of science, leading him to deny that science is a genuinely methodological process. In his book Of him Against the method he argues that scientific progress is not the result of applying any particular method. Basically, he says that for any specific method or norm of science, one can find a historical episode in which violating it has contributed to scientific progress. Thus, if believers in the scientific method wish to express a simple universally valid rule, Feyerabend jokingly suggests that anything goes. This kind of criticism has led to a strong program, a radical approach to the sociology of science.

Postmodernist critiques of science have been the subject of intense controversy. This ongoing debate, known as the science wars, is the result of applying conflicting values ​​and assumptions between postmodernism and scientific realism. Whereas postmodernists claim that scientific knowledge is just another discourse (realizing the special meaning of this term in the context) and that it is not representative of any form of fundamental truth, realists in the scientific community maintain that knowledge scientist reveals real and fundamental truths of reality. Many books have been written by scientists who have taken up this problem and challenged the claims of postmodernists while defending science as a legitimate method of deriving truth.​​​​​

Criticism

In his book "Realism and the Aim of Science: From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery", Karl Popper denies that the scientific method exists:

As a rule, I begin my scientific method dissertations by telling my students that the scientific method does not exist. I claim that there is no scientific method in any of these three cases. To put it more directly:

• There is no method to discover a scientific theory.
• There is no method to verify the truth of a hypothesis (that is, there is no verification method).
• There is no method to determine if a hypothesis is probable or probably true.

It is debated whether Karl Popper denies the existence of any method, or whether he argues that there is no " one " generic method for all cases.